7 Deadly e-Commerce Checkout Sins

Back in the 1970s when bell bottoms roamed the world and 8-tracks reigned supreme, the Eagles warned us that Hotel California was a place where you could “checkout anytime you like, but you can never leave.”

Well, on the 21^st century e-commerce landscape there is a similar dilemma facing customers who want to buy everything from gardening equipment to a new car: they can try to checkout anytime they like, but they can never buy.

Below, we highlight seven deadly e-commerce checkout sins that lead to lost sales and reputation damage:

1. It takes too long to buy stuff.

Patience may be a virtue, but most customers aren’t in the mood to refine this noble characteristic when they’re ready to buy stuff. After all, they’ve already invested their valuable time choosing item(s). They want to cross this task off their to-do list right away. In fact, 70% of customers say that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.

2. The process is too complex.

People who buy things online are intelligent and savvy. But that doesn’t mean they want to feel as if they’re putting together IKEA furniture when going through the checkout process. They want the experience to be straightforward and simple.  They just want to provide the required information — and nothing more. Less is definitely more.

3. Not displaying a progress bar.

A progress bar tells customers where they are in the checkout process (e.g. cart summary, sign-in, address, shipping, payment), so they know that things are headed towards a satisfying, successful conclusion. Without this information, they can get irritated if they expect the next screen to say “thank you for your purchase”, but is yet another form to fill out.

4. No ongoing form validation.

This one is tricky. Waiting for customers to get to the end of a form before telling them that they need to fix one or multiple fields can lead to an “I can’t be bothered with this, I’m getting out of here” reaction.

The best practice here is to configure form validation to scan and report as customers move from one field to another, or possibly one section to another (e.g. shipping address to payment information). Admittedly, some customers will still be irked by these “please fix the error” messages. But sending small notes as they move through the form/section is still better than forcing them to back up after they’ve reached the finish line.

5. No guest checkout.

For businesses, granular customer data can be far more valuable than an actual purchase. However, online sellers need to resist the temptation to force all customers to create an account before they can checkout. Otherwise, they are going to lose customers; not necessarily because those customers are reluctant to share their data, but because they just aren’t in the mood to pick a username and password, and then validate their email address.

With this in mind, sellers should provide incentives for customers to create an account by, for example, informing them that doing so will enable them to track order fulfilment, save time in the future, etc.

6. Failing to EXPLICITLY mention all costs.

Customers hate discovering surprise costs at checkout. Ideally, sellers can avoid this problem entirely by having zero extra costs of any kind. But realistically, most sellers need to charge shipping/handling (at least until a threshold is met), and potentially other fees based on the item(s) being purchased, the location of the customer, and other factors.

The best way for sellers to deal with this is to make potential/inevitable extra costs explicit. Burying these details at the bottom of a page, and in font so tiny that customers need a telescope to read them, is more than worthy of a pair of Bad Idea Jeans.

7. Dysfunctional buttons, fields and other elements.

Nothing screams “please don’t buy from us” louder than a checkout process where buttons, fields and other elements don’t work, or when customers are presented with a dreaded 404 Page Not Found (ironically, the funnier or more creative this page might be, the more incensed customers can get — as if the seller is shrugging off their pain and suffering).  Using a solution like AlertBot to automatically and continuously test page integrity — and proactively send alerts when something goes wrong or doesn’t work — is an absolute must.

The Bottom Line

The e-commerce landscape is fiercely competitive, and it typically takes much less for online customers to head for the virtual exits than it does for in-store customers to head for the physical exits. Online sellers need to ensure that they aren’t committing any of the seven deadly — and wholly preventable — e-commerce sins described above. Otherwise, instead of fostering engaged customers, they will trigger outraged ones.

6 Tips to Prepare Your E-Commerce Site for the Biggest Holiday Traffic Surge Ever

by Louis Kingston

So it begins.

No, we are not talking about the school year, the football season, or a dizzying array of television shows about zombies, detectives, and of course: zombie detectives (seriously, it’s a thing).

Rather, we are talking about the beginning of what for most ecommerce businesses is the make-or-break race to the end of the year called “gift buying season.” Except this year, things are going to be different.

To understand why, let’s zoom in on what, for most ecommerce businesses, is the most critical period of the gift buying season — Cyber Week — which starts on Thanksgiving, and runs through to Cyber Monday. According to research by BigCommerce.com, during Cyber Week 2019 same-store sales across all verticals increased by a whopping 21% compared to Cyber Week 2018, and the average order value jumped by 10%.

And now, we come to 2020, a year in which billions of people are either obligated or advised to stay at home. These folks aren’t going to even consider hopping into their car to navigate the mall jungle. Instead, they’re going to pause Fortnite, minimize Reddit, crack their knuckles, replace the battery in their mouse, and BUY all kinds of stuff online: from toaster ovens to 60” 4K TVs to luxury sneakers to mounted singing bass fish (remember those?).

Simply put: 2020 is not just going to break e-commerce sales records, but it is going to obliterate them. In fact, in terms of how many people buy stuff online and how much they buy, there may never be another year quite like it in terms of year-over-year surges in volume and value.

For e-commerce businesses, this makes the 2020 gift buying season absolutely critical — which in turn means that crashed or slow websites are NOT OK. In fact, the mere idea of their possible existence is horrifying and just plain unacceptable, like a floating island of fire ants (which, unfortunately, is also a thing).

To prevent a catastrophe worse than anything the Griswold Family might experience, here are six essential things do to:

1. Anticipate how much traffic is likely to arrive — keeping in mind that it’s probably going to be much higher than in past years during Cyber Week and throughout the remainder of 2020 — and proactively ensure that the host can handle the load. For more insight and advice, read our article on how to prevent traffic spikes from crashing your website.

2. Assess site speed, and if necessary dial up the velocity (and then dial it up some more). If you have any doubts about this, read our article on the 3 reasons why website speed is more important than ever.

3. Eliminate the 4 common causes of cart abandonment: unexpected costs, forcing customers to create an account, a long and winding checkout process, and bugs.

4. Optimize the mobile shopping and purchasing experience. During Cyber Week in 2019, mobile orders were responsible for 49% of all online sales.

5. Analyze and address security vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, shoppers aren’t the only people who love e-commerce sites — hackers do too, and they demonstrate their affection by deploying malware and launching DDoS attacks.

6. Use a reputable and proven site uptime and availability monitoring solution like AlertBot, which will instantly notify authorized individuals (e.g. webmasters, sysadmins, etc.) if something goes wrong.

The Bottom Line

There aren’t many things that can be said with certainty about 2020. However, two things make the list: we will hear the phrase “new normal” at least a thousand more times before the year is up, and the gift buying season for e-commerce businesses is going to be colossal.

Whether that is colossal good (think Avengers) or colossal bad (think the Death Star) will largely be determined by the six essential factors described above. Which epic story do you want your e-commerce business to tell in the months ahead?

Try AlertBot today and see why it’s trusted and recommended by some of the world’s biggest enterprises. There’s no billing information to provide, nothing to download, and you’ll be completely set up in minutes — click here.

Louis is a writer, author, and avid film fan. He has been writing professionally for tech blogs and local organizations for over a decade. Louis currently resides in Allentown, PA, with his wife and German Shepherd Einstein, where he writes articles for InfoGenius, Inc, and overthinks the mythos of his favorite fandoms.

4 Common Causes of Cart Abandonment — and How to Solve Them

by Louis Kingston

It’s a sad story that has become so common, that it just kind of blends into the background — like that awful elevator jazz that some coffee shops play (Thelonious Monk would NOT approve), or economy class in-flight meals (there’s less sodium on a salt lick, and you don’t get rammed in the ankle by a cabin trolley). Alas, we’re talking about the cart abandonment epidemic.

And epidemic is indeed the right word, because this problem is not local or limited. Forrester Research pegs the number of customers who bid adios to their cart at 87%, with 70% of them choosing to do so just before checkout. Overall, $18 billion worth of products each year are left to languish in digital trolleys.

Here are four common and costly cart-based reasons why customers flee the sales funnel, rather than triumphantly complete the buyer’s journey:

1. Unexpected costs.

Customers don’t merely dislike unexpected costs like shipping, or nebulous “handling” fees (what, are people buying plutonium or something?). They absolutely hate them. There might even be a clinical psychological aversion to this called “unexpectedcostphobia.”

The solution: be transparent about all automatic or potential costs by advertising a clear and realistic estimate, providing a delivery calculator on the home page (not buried at the end of the checkout process), and if possible, offering free shipping for a minimum purchase.

2. Obliging customers to create an account.

A decade or two ago, customers didn’t mind creating an account to purchase something online, simply because they didn’t know there was any other way. It was part of the deal, like the turning of the earth or standing in line for longer than you should at the post office. It’s going to happen.

But now, customers have enjoyed a taste of the guest checkout experience — and many of them love it; especially if they’re suffering from security fatigue and wince at the idea of remembering more login credentials. Naturally, e-commerce sites that fail to cater to this preference set themselves up for plenty of cart abandonment.

The solution: if creating an account is mandatory, make the process as simple and fast as possible (and then make it even simpler and faster). In addition, give customers an incentive to create an account such as a discount offer, special gift, or anything else that has value and isn’t going to lead to a bankruptcy filing.

3. Long and winding checkout process.

In 1970, The Beatles sang about the “Long and Winding Road” and scored yet another U.S. Billboard #1 hit. However, e-commerce sites that have a long and winding checkout process aren’t going to be certified platinum. They’re going to be certified terrified, because cart abandonment rates will be far higher than their competition.

The solution: ruthlessly streamline down the checkout process to the bare minimum, and use as few fields as possible. Yes, getting as much glorious customer data is important — but it’s not as important as getting customers on the roster in the first place.

4. Bugs, bugs and more bugs.

Even entomologists don’t like website bugs and other completely preventable technical errors that make online shopping irritating instead of enjoyable. Even one of these bugs is enough to trigger cart (and brand) abandonment — let alone a bunch of them.

The solution: use a reputable third-party platform to constantly monitor all important web pages and multi-step processes — such as login, signup, checkout and so on — to proactively detect and destroy bugs, or anything else that makes customers miserable like slow page loading. Learn more about this here.

The Bottom Line
Completely eliminating cart abandonment isn’t possible, because there will always be customers who pause or stop the purchase process. But solving all of the problems described above significantly increases the chances that both carts and customers will get to the finish line, and be inspired to come back for more. And isn’t that the whole point?

Louis is a writer, author, and avid film fan. He has been writing professionally for tech blogs and local organizations for over a decade. Louis currently resides in Allentown, PA, with his wife and German Shepherd Einstein, where he writes articles for InfoGenius, Inc, and overthinks the mythos of his favorite fandoms.

If You Build It, They Won’t Come: 5 Big, Scary and Costly e-Commerce Site Mistakes

by Louis Kingston

In the 1989 flick Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner turns his Iowa cornfield into a baseball field because a voice tells him: if you build it, he will come. The “he” in question is his late father, and the movie has a magical, uplifting ending that makes us want to dream again (and possibly, play baseball or eat some corn).

Well, many folks who launch e-commerce sites also believe that: if I build it, they will come. This time, “they” means throngs of happy, profitable customers. Except…they don’t. And before long, the site is forced to scale down or shut down. Even writing to Kevin Costner doesn’t help — even if you promise to watch a double feature of The Postman and Waterworld (not recommended without a physician’s approval).

The bad news is that this kind of misery happens all the time. The good news — actually, make that the amazing, glorious, Field-of-Dreams-ending-like news — is that preventing this doom and gloom is largely a matter of avoiding these five big, scary and costly e-commerce site mistakes:

1. Lousy UX

Tiny buttons that are impossible to click on a mobile device without a magnifying glass and hands the size of a Ken doll. Search functions that neither search nor function. Elusive top level categories. Gigantic banners that pop open and chase customers around from page to page, like a kind of online shopping Terminator (“I’ll be baaaaaack!”). These are just some of the many ways that lousy UX destroys e-commerce sites.

The remedy? Monitor all pages and multi-step processes (e.g. login areas, signups, checkout, etc.), to identify bottlenecks where customers routinely encounter errors or unresponsive behavior, and fix any gaps and leaks right away. Learn more about doing this here.

2. S…l…o…w…n…e…s…s

Just how vital is speed? Behold these grizzly statistics:

• A one-second delay in load time can send conversion rates plunging by seven percent. (Source: Kissmetrics)
• 70% of customers say that a website’s loading time affects their willingness to purchase. (Source: Unbounce)
• As page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds the probability of bounce increases by 32%; from 1 second to 5 seconds the probability of bounce increases by 90%; and from 1 second to 10 seconds the probability of bounce increases by 123% (source: Google)

The remedy? Be ruthless about making your e-commerce site as fast as possible (and then make it even faster). Here are the usual suspects: bloated HTML, ad network code, images not optimized, and using public networks to transmit private data. There are other culprits, but look here first — you’ll be amazed at how much speed you unleash.

3. Not Focusing on SEO — or Focusing too Much on SEO

Let’s talk about health. Some people have poor health because they don’t exercise at all. Their daily calisthenic routine involves digging in the couch for the remote. And then on the other end of the spectrum, there are people who work out too much — like, we’re talking to extremely, unhealthy levels. You know the type.

The same phenomenon occurs in the e-commerce world when it comes to SEO. Some sites don’t focus on SEO, which means they aren’t going to get found by the 35% of customers who start their buyer’s journey from Google. And some focus too much on SEO, that they neglect other channels and tactics — including good, old fashioned pure promotion.

The remedy? Definitely make SEO part of the visibility strategy. But don’t make it the end-all-and-be-all of online existence. It’s important, but it’s not everything.

4. Bad Customer Service

 Customer service is as important in the online world as the brick-and-mortar world, and in some cases it’s even more important, because exiting the buyer’s journey is so simple — as is writing a scathing zero-star review that would have made Roger Ebert wince. Unfortunately, many e-commerce sites treat customer service as an afterthought or a necessary evil, rather than an asset that should be leveraged to optimize customer experience and generate loyalty.

The remedy? Make customer service — characterized by the ease, speed, and quality of responsiveness and resolution — a big part of the plan. It’s not an expense, but an investment.

5. Lack of Original, Compelling Content

E-commerce sites aren’t vending machines, yet many of them seem to take their inspiration from these handy contraptions that dispense candy and soda in exchange for money and the push of a button (be careful you don’t press the wrong one — you might end up with that oatmeal cookie that has been there since 2007, and not the Snickers bar that you’re craving).

However, most customers — even those who are very focused on getting a specific item, like a pair of sneakers, a smartphone, or a hotel room — want and expect to access relevant information to help them make a safer, smarter purchase decision. This could be videos, infographics, social proof (e.g. testimonials, reviews, case studies, etc.), articles, blog posts, and downloadable assets like ebooks,  checklists, and so on.

The remedy? Don’t skimp on creating original, compelling content. As a bonus, this will help with SEO and can connect you with profitable customers who are not in your primary target market.

The Bottom Line

Competition on the e-commerce landscape for the hearts, minds, and indeed, wallets of customers is ferocious. Avoiding these mistakes will go a long, long way to helping your e-commerce site survive and thrive.

You may even make enough profit to retire early, buy a cornfield in Iowa, and then turn it into a baseball field that inspires the feel-good movie of the year. Hey, it worked once before, right?

Louis is a writer, author, and avid film fan. He has been writing professionally for tech blogs and local organizations for over a decade. Louis currently resides in Allentown, PA, with his wife and their German Shepherd Einstein, where he writes articles for InfoGenius, Inc, and overthinks the mythos of his favorite fandoms.

While we’re still recovering from full bellies and empty wallets from the Thanksgiving celebratory weekend, we poured over the performance results for each site to drill in to see how they compared to last year’s event.

As usual, we used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor all three sites from Thanksgiving Day through Black Friday and Cyber Monday, spanning from November 22, 2018 to November 26, 2018. We expected strong, reliable performance again during the entire run and we were not disappointed. The results were nothing short of impressive. In fact, we were impressed to mostly see improvement this year over last year.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Last year, in an unusual feat, each site experienced not a single error or failure event. The same mostly held true for 2018, but both Walmart.com and Target.com struggled with a few slow file load times (which can cause a page to load slower), but it was never enough to cause any actual site downtime. With that in mind, we think it’s still fine to award 10’s across the board.

(Amazon 10/10)
(Walmart 10/10)
(Target 10/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.

Last year was the first time we ran this event, so it was interesting to be able to compare last year’s results with this year’s. Ecommerce sites tend to have very graphics-heavy designs, and especially with sale events like these, the graphics are often big, frequently changing, and sometimes even animated or video-driven. (Amazon even had live video streaming at one point throughout the purchasing frenzy!)

With that said, through Amazon.com’s 5-day run, they saw the fastest day, on average, to be Sunday, November 25^th with 4.2 seconds—which is almost exactly what last year was (Their fastest was also a Sunday at 4.3 seconds). Their slowest day, on average, was actually on Black Friday itself at 4.5 seconds, which, admittedly, still isn’t too bad. When looking at specific times of day for performance, the best hour was 7AM on Sunday with an impressive 2.6 seconds (an improvement over last year by almost a full second), while the day before saw the slowest hour at noon with a dismal 9.3 seconds (which was significantly worse than last year).
(Amazon 9/10)

Walmart.com was the fastest last year and proved not only to hold that title again this year, but they also showed improvement! Their best average day was Cyber Monday, November 26th at 3.8 seconds. Their worst day on average was Sunday, November 25^th,  at 4.1 seconds (Coincidentally, it was also Nov. 25^th last year, but this year it was almost a full second faster). Finally, their best hour on average was on Cyber Monday at an impressive 1.8 seconds at 6PM. Their worst time on average was 6.9 seconds at 5PM on Black Friday, which is not when you want to be experiencing your slowest web speed.
(Walmart 9.5/10)

Last, but certainly not least, Target.com performed respectably, but once again underperformed in comparison to the other two. Their best day for speed, on average, was Black Friday at 5.4 seconds, which is not only worse than both Amazon and Walmart’s worst days, but it’s .2 seconds slower than their performance last year. Target’s slowest day on average was Cyber Monday, November 26 at 6.3 seconds, almost a full second slower than last year. Their fastest hour turned out to be on Black Friday at 5AM with 3.1 seconds, which is a slight improvement, with their slowest time being on Monday at 3PM with 8.9 seconds, over a second longer than last year, and sadly during mid-day on Cyber Monday.
(Target 8.5/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

California has almost always come out on top as the fastest state, but this year they were consistently dethroned by none other than Oregon! For Amazon.com, the ecommerce mega-site saw average load times of 1.4 seconds in the The Beaver State, with their next-fastest location being Ohio at 1.6 seconds and Nevada at 1.8 seconds. When it came to their slowest locations, Washington, D.C. took the prize at a sluggish 7.5 seconds and Washington state clocking in at 7.3 seconds.
(Amazon 9/10)

Just like in 2017, Walmart.com was faster, but by a mere millisecond, seeing an average load time of 1.3 seconds in Oregon. Nevada and Ohio followed at Amazon’s fastest time, 1.4 seconds. Washington state saw the site’s slowest load time at 6.8 seconds, with Colorado coming in at 6.5 seconds and Texas at 6.3 seconds – all of them being faster than Amazon’s worst locations.
(Walmart 9.5/10)

Target actually saw some improvement this year with its average load time being fastest in Nevada at 2.3 seconds in (last year’s was 2.7 in California), while Oregon came in second at 2.5 seconds and Ohio third at 2.7 seconds. And like last year, Target’s fastest speeds proved to be slower than their competitors. The slowest average speed that Target saw in the U.S. was sadly worse than last year. Washington state clocked in at a truly dismal 10.7-second average load time, with Colorado a second behind at 9.6 seconds, and Texas at 9.3 seconds. It’s unfortunate that Target continues to miss the mark for website speed.
(Target 8.5/10)

Usability

For usability, we always select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites we’re testing and replicate it. For last year’s Showdown, we decided to see what the experience would be like to use these three different websites to add a common product to the shopping cart. To do this, we selected one item to search for and add to our cart, and this year we decided to do the same again.

For each of these processes, we picked an easy item to search for, and sought to add a Blu-Ray copy of Disney and Pixar’s Incredibles 2 to our shopping cart. To begin each process, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.amazon.com into our Chrome browser, typing “Incredibles 2 blu-ray” into the store’s search box, and adding it to the cart, it took 34 seconds. From the front page, it took about 5 clicks (including having to log in to get to the final checkout) to get to the “Place your order” window.

From the point of typing www.walmart.com into Chrome and going through the same process, it took about 6 clicks and 32 seconds to log in and get to the final cart checkout page.

And from the point of typing www.target.com into our Chrome browser, it also took about 6 clicks and 32 seconds to log in and get to the checkout window.

Each site was a good experience to use, although each one has a different feel and approach. It’s a tough call to say which user experience we found to be better, but each one was straightforward and easy to use. If we judge the sites based on search results, Amazon tried suggesting a few things unrelated to the specific search of the “blu-ray” disc first (like a Jurassic Park daily deal and a preorder for Venom), while both Target and Walmart have more direct and accurate results (even though Walmart suggests the DVD and 4K before the actual blu-ray). In that case, we’d have to give Walmart and Target a little more props for accuracy in their product search.

(Amazon 9.5/10)
(Walmart 9.5/10)
(Target 10/10)

Verdict

With stakes this high once again, you would only expect the best from the leaders in ecommerce, so it comes as no surprise that the results were so good and so close.

With all things accounted for – reliability, speed, geographical performance, and the site’s usability – we’ve reached our verdict, and it surprises even us for a second year in a row:

Winner:

It’s that time of year again, where sales conscious bargain chasers brave the throngs of other sale hunters in the frigid November early morning air on that most dreaded of retail shopping days: BLACK FRIDAY. Just hours earlier, many of these same credit-card-wielding warriors were huddled around a table with family, giving thanks once again while stuffing themselves to their waistline’s discontent with mashed potatoes, roasted turkey and homemade pie. The juxtaposition of these two contradicting practices is staggering, but it’s no less the holiday tradition year after year.

As we approach another Christmas holiday, the world of ecommerce continues to ramp up the way they approach Black Friday–and its younger electronic sibling, Cyber Monday–with many now starting their sales right after Halloween. Accordingly, we decided to do something special for our next Website Showdown: a Black Friday / Cyber Monday edition that pits the ecommerce colossus Amazon against the websites for brick-and-mortar retail mega-stores Walmart and Target. It’s a truly epic battle royale to see how each site performs during the biggest shopping days of the year.

So, as usual, we used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor all three sites from Thanksgiving through Black Friday and Cyber Monday, spanning from November 23, 2017 to November 27, 2017. We expected strong, reliable performance during the entire run and we were not disappointed. The results were nothing short of impressive.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Usually for this section, we evaluate each site’s performance in detail, drilling down to specific errors each one faced, and the different types of errors we usually see (like Slow Page Files, Timeouts, etc). It’s unusual for the sites in a two-site Showdown to not return a single error, much less a three-site Showdown. In this special evaluation of three sites, not one single, solitary error was found between them. All three sites avoided any kind of failure event or significant error. With the stakes so high for three of the biggest retailers on the most significant sale days of the year, one would expect nothing less. So, with that said, each site earns a perfect score for Reliability.

(Amazon 10/10)
(Walmart 10/10)
(Target 10/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.

Sites like Amazon, Walmart and Target boast very graphics-driven designs, and especially with monstrous sale event days like these, the graphics are often big, bold, and frequently changing.

With that said, of Amazon.com’s 5-day run, they saw the fastest day, on average, to be Sunday, November 26^th with 4.3 seconds. It’s not the slickest speed a site can have, but it’s certainly not bad. On their slowest day, on average, Amazon still clocked in at 5 seconds on Cyber Monday, which is still not too shabby. When looking at specific times of day for performance, the best hour was at 5AM on Sunday with an impressive 3.4 seconds, while Cyber Monday also saw the slowest hour at 7AM with 6.7 seconds.
(Amazon 9/10)

Walmart.com held their own surprisingly well during this time, too. Their best average day was Thanksgiving Day, November 23^rd at 4.2 seconds, just barely edging ahead of Amazon. Their worst day on average was Saturday, November 25^th, also at 5 seconds. Finally, their best hour on average was on Thanksgiving at a remarkable 2.7 seconds at 5PM. Their worst time on average was 6.4 seconds at 2AM on Sunday, November 26.
(Walmart 9.5/10)

Last, but certainly not least, Target.com didn’t perform quite as well as the other two, but they still performed respectably, especially considering the fact their site avoided any failure events. Their best day for speed, on average, was Thanksgiving Day at 5.2 seconds, which is worse than both Amazon and Walmart’s worst days. Target’s slowest day on average was Sunday, November 26 at 5.4 seconds, which at the very least, shows a great consistency for the performance of the retail chain’s online presence. Their fastest hour turned out to be on Black Friday at 9AM with 3.9 seconds, with their slowest being on Cyber Monday at 4AM with 7.6 seconds.
(Target 8.5/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

California tends to prove to see the fastest web transaction speeds in the country, and in this test scenario, they once again come out on top for each website. For Amazon.com, the titan of ecommerce saw average load times of 2 seconds in the The Golden State, with their next-fastest location being Texas at 3.2 seconds. When it came to their slowest locations, Illinois came in at the bottom with 6.6 seconds, with Georgia just above them with 6.3 seconds.
(Amazon 9/10)

Walmart.com was only a millisecond faster, seeing an average load time of 1.9 seconds in California, also coming in faster in Texas at 2.7 seconds. But Walmart saw a placement swap for which state was the slowest, with Georgia coming in at the bottom at 6.6 seconds and Illinois right above them at 6.5 seconds.
(Walmart 9.5/10)

Target loaded on average at 2.7 seconds in California, with Texas coming in next at 3.5 seconds. Again, Target’s fastest speeds proved to be slower than their competitors. The slowest average speed that Target saw in the U.S. was also Georgia, at 7.2 seconds, but Washington stepped in as their second slowest, at 7 seconds flat.
(Target 8.5/10)

Usability

For usability, we always select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites we’re testing and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like visiting a site for nutritional information or going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater. Like with the most recent Showdown for Lowes and Home Depot, we decided to see what the experience would be like to use these three different websites to add a common product to the shopping cart.

For each of these processes, let’s see about adding the PS4 version of new video game Star Wars: Battlefront II to our shopping cart. To begin each process, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.amazon.com into our Chrome browser, typing “Star Wars Battlefront 2” into the store’s search box and adding it to the cart, it took 30 seconds. From the front page, it took about 5 clicks (including selecting the autocomplete suggestion in the search bar) to get to the final “Place Order” window.

From the point of typing www.walmart.com into our Chrome browser, it took about 4 clicks and 35 seconds to get to the Cart Checkout window. The autocomplete was a little clumsy to deal with (it was tough to tell if the browser was really proceeding to load the site), but overall, it was a decent experience.

From the point of typing www.target.com into our Chrome browser, it took about 5 clicks and 27 seconds to get to the Cart Checkout window.

All three sites were good experiences, although each one has a very different feel. It’s a tough call to say which user experience we found to be better, so we decided to try a second test. This time, we chose something different, like Wonder Woman on Blu-Ray. We also decided to try Mozilla Firefox this time.

The process of finding the Blu-Ray disc and getting to the checkout process on Amazon took about 4 clicks and 25 seconds. The process on Walmart.com took 26 seconds and 5 clicks. On Target.com, it took roughly 24 seconds and 4 clicks. This time, we noticed that in the search results, there’s a convenient “Add to cart” option next to the items on Target’s site that Walmart and Amazon both DON’T have. This definitely gives Target a slight edge over their competitors. And with that being the only real significant difference, outside of its slightly faster completion time, we’ll have to say Target wins the Usability portion of this Showdown.

(Amazon 9.5/10)
(Walmart 9.5/10)
(Target 10/10)

Verdict

With stakes this high, you would only expect the best from the leaders in the retail industry, so it comes as no surprise that the results were so good and so close. This may be the toughest Showdown we’ve had to score yet, especially with three hats in the ring this time around.

But, with all things accounted for – reliability, speed, geographical performance, and the site’s usability – we’ve reached our verdict:

WINNER:

The Most Important Pages and Processes to Monitor on a Website

Most companies take advantage of third party website monitoring services to monitor their websites 24/7 for performance issues and downtime. These services alert them immediately when problems arise, equipping them with the necessary knowledge to pinpoint the problem so their team can resolve it.

Companies rely on their website for many things.  Whether their website is used to generate leads, drive business, or keep customers engaged, essential processes and pages on their website are often the lifeblood of their business and online presence.

In the same way that a routine doctor or dentist appointment evaluates your health and checks for any potential impairments or issues that need improvement or fixing, using website monitoring to routinely check your site’s performance is crucial to the success of your company’s online presence.

Here are some important processes and webpages to evaluate and monitor on your website:

The Landing Page

Your landing page is the page that is supposed to hook your visitor, draw them in and get them interested in your product or service.  Making sure these pages are always reachable by potential new customers is of utmost importance.  It may seem like a no-brainer to monitor this vital page, but a lot of people who own small businesses do not think to apply website monitoring to their landing pages.

Page Loading Speed

Once the user gets past your landing page, they become keenly aware of your website’s speed; particularly if it’s sluggish.  With the competition being fierce, one of the major website processes to monitor is each of your page’s loading speed. You cannot afford to have a home page that takes 10 seconds or more to load. The new generation of internet users is not patient enough to sit through a sluggish download or stare at a spinning “loading” icon. If you have a page that takes time to load, you may need to make some design alterations, incorporating minimalistic design that is both attractive and loads faster. A lot of web designers have taken this into account and have adopted new techniques to make the webpages load faster while retaining a fresh and respectable look.  Website monitoring can help you identify if your page load time is negatively affecting your bottom line.

Geographic Performance

Monitoring your website traffic and performance from different countries is extremely important. Knowing where most of your customers come from and enhancing the performance from that geographic area the most can make all the difference for your business. If you cater to a certain state or province, then monitoring the specific geographical location or district that fuels your business is recommended.

Your Shopping Carts

E-commerce driven websites must monitor their shopping carts very closely. For example, if a customer placed products in a cart but did not buy them, it could mean that there are issues with the checkout process. However, if you were not monitoring your cart, you would never know about it and might just assume they lost interest. Poor shopping cart performance will directly affect your company’s sales, which makes monitoring your shopping cart processes that much more important.

Your Signup Pages

Any page on your website that prompts a customer to sign up or register for a service needs to be up and running 24/7. Statistics show that in cases where the signup pages of a website are not working optimally, visitors often abandon the signup process due to a loss in confidence.  Since these pages are directly involved with registering new customers or providing new service to existing customers, they are some of the most crucial to monitor on your website.

Login Pages

Customer frustrations over not being able to access members-only areas of your website can cost you not only customers, but also support hours dealing with the problem. Getting ahead of the problem by monitoring these areas can save your company a lot of time and money.

These are just some of the top areas of your website to ensure are running smoothly 24/7. Start monitoring your most crucial pages today with a no-risk, 14-day FREE trial of AlertBot and start saving your company time, money and unnecessary headaches.

While websites like Walmart, Fanatics and QVC experienced a couple several-minute outages on Thanksgiving Day, one of the sites that seemed to struggle the most on Black Friday this year was the online destination for department store Neiman Marcus. The site even experienced a downtime of two hours in the morning.

Second only to NeimanMarcus.com, however, is online tech retailer Newegg.com, who experienced some slow page load times no doubt due to the heightened traffic. Finally, Staples.com also experienced some short outages, but nothing more than a few minutes each.

Through Saturday and Sunday, it was much of the same with Neiman Marcus, Staples and Newegg, with Walmart seeing a few hiccups and Shutterfly.com experiencing a 45-minute outage due to the server being overloaded with traffic. Sony’s Playstation Network also experienced some significant downtime on Saturday, which also affected their online store.

Downtime of any length can be costly for any online retailer. According to this article by Evolven.com, “The average cost of data center downtime across industries was $5,600 per minute.” Clearly, that would add up real quick – especially on a major shopping day.

With AlertBot’s monitoring services, not only can you be alerted the moment your site experiences an outage or slow load times, but you’ll be able to use the AlertBot charts and reports to find potential hang-ups and future problems that will result in unnecessary downtime.

Give AlertBot a try with our totally free trial period and start seeing how AlertBot can look out for your business to help you prevent serious financial loss and online disasters.

Get Your Website Ready For Holiday Traffic

It’s that time of year again. As we say farewell to summer and prepare for the coming of autumn next week, online retailers are faced with one harsh reality: Black Friday is a mere two months away. And while that may seem like a long time from now to some, now is really the time for preparation. And just like any brick and mortar retailer needs to have their store ready to go with employees on hand to wrangle the shopping masses, websites need to make sure their site is tuned up and ready for an influx of traffic.

If you’re feeling pretty confident that you’re ready and that this warning may seem premature or unnecessary altogether, let’s take a moment to spotlight last year’s Black Friday festivities and pitfalls.

The biggest name to have experienced major website failures last November was electronics retail chain Best Buy. Issues were recorded and reported on throughout the day on Black Friday and it sent social media abuzz with chatter and complaints about the site’s performance—or lack thereof.

Best Buy wasn’t the only one affected, however. Computer company HP’s webstore also experienced failure, while in the UK, online stores Currys (electronics), Argos (department store) and Tesco (groceries) all went down as well.

So what can we glean from this?

If you’re an online retailer, you’re probably already thinking about the holidays and getting prepared, but now is the most crucial time to not only make sure you have reliable website monitoring, but to evaluate your website’s performance so you can make improvements before the big online sale days. And you’re in luck – AlertBot can assist with your performance evaluation and help you rest assured that your site will perform better in time for the holidays. Try it out for free with our 14-day trial.